A possible link between psoriasis and heart-attack risk
ome of the same inflammation brought on by the immune system in the more severe form of psoriasis appears to put younger patients with the autoimmune disease at increased risk of a heart attack, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that younger patients with severe psoriasis had the highest relative risk of heart attack compared to people with only a mild form of the disease or patients without psoriasis.

Psoriasis is a common, lifelong inflammatory skin condition that affects about 4.5 million American adults, with about 150,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Although the condition typically appears in people in their 20s and 30s, it can develop at a younger age. When it does, the disease is likely to be more severe, with skin irritation and itching that affects more than 2 percent of the body.

About 20 percent of psoriasis patients have more severe and extensive involvement, and up to 30 percent also develop a related form of arthritis that causes joints to become inflamed.

Doctors have suspected that the inflammation may also extend to arteries, and several hospital-based studies have indicated that psoriasis is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attack. But none of those studies took into account other risk factors for heart disease among the patients.

In the new study, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Joel Gelfand, an assistant professor of dermatology at Penn and colleagues sought to evaluate the disease as a heart-risk factor in a large, general population....